How We Can Help Latinas Around the Globe Get Better Access to Birth Control

March 8 is International Women's Day, a day to reflect on the status of women no matter where they live. In my work with Latinas in the U.S. and when I return to Mexico to visit friends and family, I hear the same thing from women on both sides of the border:

"No one ever talked to me about sex or how to avoid getting pregnant if I didn't want to be."

Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger spent her life making family planning accessible to women in the U.S. including aggressively (if unsuccessfully) lobbying Congress during the Great Depression to legalize birth control, thinking that representatives and senators would not deny women suffering from crushing poverty the opportunity to postpone having children they couldn't afford to feed.

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What is less well known is that Margaret Sanger traveled the world, making the same case on behalf of women in other parts of the world.

While today contraception is broadly legal throughout the world, we know that women and girls across the globe, including in many Latin American countries, continue to lack access to essential health care that would enable them to prevent unintended pregnancy, unsafe abortion, and HIV/AIDS.

My family left Mexico seeking a better life in the United States. But even in the U.S., as Latinas, we are the least likely of all ethnic groups to be insured, experience disproportionately high rates of sexually transmitted infections, unintended pregnancy, and cervical cancer. Latinas in their prime childbearing years, ages 18-34, are also more likely than all other young women in the U.S. to use prescription birth control inconsistently because they cannot afford the cost.

This is why helping Latinas in our community is so important, because time and again we see that countries are stronger when women play an equal role in society, from running businesses to participating in policy making.

It is this strategic interest as much as an issue of women's rights that motivated the Obama administration to make family planning programs a key foreign policy priority. Under Secretary Hillary Clinton's leadership, the State Department made women's health a central part of global health programs and has worked to fully integrate these programs into U.S. foreign policy.

As John Kerry takes over as Secretary of State, we have a renewed opportunity to draw attention to the 222 million women worldwide who want to prevent unintended pregnancy but lack access to modern birth control. Of course, we expect and hope that Secretary Kerry will sustain Secretary Clinton's legacy, but we also know that it's not enough to simply maintain the status quo.

And it takes money. Over the last three years, anti-women's health politicians in Congress have attempted to cut funding for global reproductive health programs with each budget cycle.

We know that expanding access to family planning services saves lives. Evidence shows that we could cut maternal deaths by nearly one-third globally by making sure women across the globe have access to contraception.

These are sound investments. Current U.S. funding for international family planning programs provides birth control to more than 30 million women and couples around the world. These services and supplies help to avert 9.4 million unintended pregnancies, 4 million abortions, the majority of which are unsafe, and prevent the deaths of 22,000 women each year. For many of us in the U.S. with families and friends abroad, these vital services could help our loved ones.

That's why we need strong leadership from the State Department and a robust budget approved by Congress. We must continue to push for better policies and expanded access to vital health care for women and girls around the world, just as we do for Latinas here at home.

May Sifuentes is an associate for Latino outreach at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.